Charles R. Smith
Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2006
newsmax.com
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/1/17/141106.shtml ...
Big Brother Al
There are times when Al Gore should sit down and shut up. Former Vice President Al Gore called for an independent investigation into President Bush's domestic spying program, insisting that the president "repeatedly and insistently" broke the law by eavesdropping on Americans without court approval.
What Al Gore forgot to tell his audience was that he not only supported eavesdropping on Americans without court approval - he also chaired a project designed to execute just that in total secrecy. In short, Al Gore wanted to bug every phone, computer and fax in America.
In 1993 Al Gore was charged by then President Bill Clinton to run the "Clipper" project. Clipper was a special chip designed by the National Security Agency (NSA) to be built into all phones, computers and fax machines. Not only would Clipper provide scrambled security, it also contained a special "exploitable feature" enabling the NSA to monitor all phone calls without a court order.
In 1993, VP Al Gore went to work with a top secret group of Clinton advisers, called the IWG or Interagency Working Group, and delivered a report on the Clipper project.
"Simply stated, the nexus of the long term problem is how can the government sustain its technical ability to accomplish electronic surveillance in an advanced telecommunications environment," states the TOP SECRET report prepared by Gore's Interagency Working Group.
"The solution to the access problem for future telecommunications requires that the vendor/manufacturing community translate the government's requirements into a fundamental system design criteria," noted the Gore report.
"The basic issue for resolution is a choice between accomplishing this objective by mandatory (i.e., statutory/regulatory) or voluntary means."
The documented truth is that America was to be given no choice but to be monitored by Big Brother Al. This awful conclusion is backed by several other documents. One such document released by the Justice Department is a March 1993 memo from Stephen Colgate, Assistant Attorney General for Administration.
According to the Colgate memo, Vice President Al Gore chaired a meeting with Hillary Clinton crony Webster Hubbell, Janet Reno, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and Leon Panetta in March 1993. The topic of the meeting was the "AT&T Telephone Security Device."
According to Colgate, AT&T had developed secure telephones the U.S. government could not tap. The Clinton-Gore administration secretly contracted with AT&T to keep the phones off the market. Colgate's memo noted that the administration was determined to prevent the American public from having private phone conversations.
"AT&T has developed a Data Encryption Standard (DES) product for use on telephones to provide security for sensitive conversations," wrote Colgate.
"The FBI, NSA and NSC want to purchase the first production run of these devices to prevent their proliferation. They are difficult to decipher and are a deterrent to wiretaps."
Buried in the Colgate memo is the first reference to government-developed monitoring devices that would be required for all Americans.
According to the March 1993 Colgate memo to Hubbell, "FBI, NSA and NSC want to push legislation which would require all government agencies and eventually everyone in the U.S. to use a new public-key based cryptography method."
Gore Lied
Al Gore quickly embraced the Clipper chip and the concept of monitoring America at all costs. In 1994, Gore wrote a glowing letter supporting the Clipper chip and the government-approved wiretap design.
"As we have done with the Clipper Chip, future key escrow schemes must contain safeguards to provide for key disclosures only under legal authorization and should have audit procedures to ensure the integrity of the system. We also want to assure users of key escrow encryption products that they will not be subject to unauthorized electronic surveillance," wrote Gore in his July 20, 1994 letter to Representative Maria Cantwell.
However, Gore lied. In 1994, federal officials were keenly aware that the Clipper chip design did not have safeguards against unauthorized surveillance. In fact, NASA turned down the Clipper project because the space agency knew of the flawed design.
In 1993, Benita A. Cooper, NASA Associate Administrator for Management Systems and Facilities, wrote: "There is no way to prevent the NSA from routinely monitoring all [Clipper] encrypted traffic. Moreover, compromise of the NSA keys, such as in the Walker case, could compromise the entire [Clipper] system."
Ms. Cooper referred to Soviet spy John Walker, who is serving life in prison for disclosing U.S. Navy secret codes. In 1993 Ms. Cooper did not know of Clinton Chinagate scandals, the Lippo Group, John Huang or Webster Hubbell, but her prophetic prediction was not so remarkable in retrospect.
Yet, Al Gore pressed ahead, continuing to support a flawed design despite warnings that the design could "compromise" every computer in the U.S.
A 1996 secret memo on a secret meeting of CIA Directer John Deutch, FBI Director Louis Freeh and Attorney General Janet Reno states, "Last summer, the Vice President agreed to explore public acceptance of a key escrow policy but did not rule out other approaches, although none seem viable at this point."
According to the 1996 report to V.P. Gore by then CIA Director Deutch, Reno proposed an all-out federal takeover of the computer security industry. The Justice Department proposed "legislation that would ... ban the import and domestic manufacture, sale or distribution of encryption that does not have key recovery. Janet Reno and Louis Freeh are deeply concerned about the spread of encryption. Pervasive use of encryption destroys the effectiveness of wiretapping, which supplies much of the evidence used by FBI and Justice. They support tight controls, for domestic use."
Share With China, Syria and Pakistan
Declassified documents from the CIA and the U.S. State Department also show that the Clinton-Gore administration considered sharing Clipper code "keys" with foreign powers including China, Syria and Pakistan.
"Are Clipper devices likely to be permitted for importation and use in the host country?" asked a secret 1993 CIA cable addressed to the U.S. embassies in Beijing, Damascus and Islamabad.
"Would the host country demand joint key holding or exclusive rights to Clipper keys for law enforcement or intelligence purposes?"
The secret 1993 CIA cable is one of 69 documents released by the U.S. State Department on the secret Clipper chip project. The documents were forced from the State Department through the Freedom of Information Act.
In addition, the State Department refused to release 12 documents as classified "in the interest of national defense or foreign relations." The documents show that the Clinton-Gore administration considered sharing secret Clipper surveillance keys with China and other hostile powers in order to monitor worldwide communications for "law enforcement" purposes.
Al Gore called the Bush anti-terrorism program "a threat to the very structure of our government." The former vice president's memory of his own threat to American privacy is flawed and filled with lies. I only hope that Gore elects to come clean with documented history. Until then he can fade into the oblivion of a lying, second-rate ex-presidential candidate.
More:
Al Gore Led Effort to Tap Every Phone in America
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